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1 1 (February 1, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/goveklm0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Research Servic inforrning the Ieg~Ilative deb~ate since 1914 India's Domestic Political Setting Updated February 1, 2023 Overview India, the world's most populous democracy, is, according to its Constitution, a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic where the bulk of executive power rests with the prime minister and his/her Council of Ministers. The Indian president is a ceremonial chief of state with limited executive powers. Since its 1947 independence, most of India's 14 prime ministers have come from the country's Hindi-speaking northern regions, and all but 3 have been upper-caste Hindus. The 543-seat Lok Sabha (House of the People) is the locus of national power, with directly elected representatives from each of the country's 28 states and 8 union territories. A smaller upper house of a maximum 250 seats, the Rajya Sabha (Council of States), may review, but not veto, revenue legislation, and has no powers over the prime minister or the cabinet. Lok Sabha and state legislators are elected to five-year terms. Rajya Sabha legislators are elected by state assemblies to six-year terms; 12 are appointed by the president. Elections to seat India's 17th Lok Sabha were held in April- May 2019, when the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, or Indian Peoples Party) won a sweeping and repeat victory under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In 2014, the BJP had become the first party to attain a parliamentary majority after 30 years of coalition governments, and it was able to expand that majority in 2019 to become the first party to win consecutive majorities since 1971. Modi, a self-avowed Hindu nationalist, ran a campaign seen as divisive by many analysts. While he and his party have long sought to emphasize economic development and good governance, nine years in office have brought a mixed record on those accounts. The 2019 election cycle (and a key 2022 state election in Uttar Pradesh) revolved around nationalism and religion, with growing concerns among many observers that strident Hindu majoritarianism represents a threat to the status of India's religious minorities and to the country's syncretic traditions. Still, hundreds of millions across the country voted to keep the remarkably popular prime minister in power into 2024. The BJP, under then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, previously had led a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition in power from 1999 to 2004. The Indian National Congress Party (hereinafter Congress Party) and its United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition, in power from 2004-2014 with Manmohan Singh in the top office, suffered a second consecutive electoral rout in 2019. The party of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, Congress had dominated the country's politics from 1947 to 1996. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi (no relation to Mohandas Gandhi), and her son, Rajiv, also served as prime minister; both were assassinated in office. The party's presumed prime ministerial candidate in 2014 and 2019, Rajiv's son, Rahul, again oversaw a failure to win even the 10% of seats required to officially lead the Lok Sabha opposition. The BJP and Congress are, in practice, India's only genuinely national parties. In the 2009 and 2014 elections they together won roughly half of all votes cast nationally, but in 2019 the BJP boosted its share to nearly 38% of the estimated 600 million votes cast (to Congress's 20%; turnout was a record 67%). The influence of regional and caste-based (and often family-run) parties-although blunted by two consecutive BJP majority victories- remains a crucial variable in Indian politics. Such parties hold roughly one-third of all Lok Sabha seats. In 2019, more than 8,000 candidates and hundreds of parties vied for parliament seats; 33 of those parties won at least one seat. The seven parties listed below account for 84% of Lok Sabha seats. The BJP's economic reform agenda can be impeded in the Rajya Sabha, where opposition parties can align to block certain nonrevenue legislation (see Figure 1). Figure I. Party Representation in India's Parliament Lok Sabha: 543 total seats DMK 4% Rajya Sabha: 245 total seats Source: Parliament of India. Graphic created by CRS. Key Government Officials Prime Minister Narendra Modi was chief minister of the economically dynamic and relatively developed western state of Gujarat from 2001 to 2014 before becoming India's first-ever lower-caste prime minster. He is a lifelong member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS or National Volunteer Organization; see below). Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, who took the defense portfolio in 2019, was home minister from 2014 to 2019, BJP president during the 2014 campaign, and has served as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, as well as in the cabinet of the BJP-led government from 1999 to 2004. Home Minister Amit Shah, a top Modi lieutenant from Gujarat and also a longtime RSS member, took his portfolio in 2019 and, in 2021, became the country's first Minister of Cooperation. He was BJP party president for 2014-2020.

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